


stars and earth

by neonheartbeat



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha Rey (Star Wars), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, FLUID CAN BE TRANSFERRED ACROSS THE BOND., Force Bond (Star Wars), Gender Fuckery, M/M, Mpreg, Multi, Omega Kylo Ren, Omega Verse, Pregnancy, Submissive Kylo Ren, dont @ me, sex organ fuckery also, wonky abo biology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-11-02 10:54:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20721425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonheartbeat/pseuds/neonheartbeat
Summary: Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order, goes into heat for the first time after being exposed to Rey through their Force bond.This is a filled prompt from @reylo_prompts on twitter. Mind the tags.





	stars and earth

**Author's Note:**

> AS ALWAYS this goes out to my thirstey gal pal Iris @kylofucker without whom I would have never delved into the wild world of mpreglo. You magical glittering starfish, never change, I love you, etc. 
> 
> CW: pregnancies both male and female and I guess funky consent dynamics? though I wouldn't call it dubcon. Be Ye Warned etc.

When Rey had been younger, which really in the grand scheme of things didn't feel like it had been all that long ago, and when she had felt crushed by the utter injustice and unfairness of the whole wide Universe outside Jakku's bleak and arid atmosphere, she would sit in her shambling wreck of an AT-AT, that she called _home_; her knees to her chest, her arms wrapped around them, her head pressed into the crook of her arm in a cradle that felt safe and warm and protected, just for a moment.

It was how she sat in D'Quar's base medical camp, waiting for Finn to wake up as monitors made soothing synth-sounds and orderlies moved to and fro, thinking about how frightening her own anger had been on Starkiller Base, thinking about Han Solo's limp form plummeting to the core of the planet.

It was how she sat on the Falcon after the bond between her and Ben—no, _Kylo Ren_, he had blatantly denied his own name again and again, she would _not_ think about his name, she wouldn't use it, she _wouldn't_—had dissolved into the ether and left her with the image of a beseeching, ghost-pale face branded on the inside of her eyelids, black in the light-negative against the white salt of Crait. Even now, it floated in front of her eyes. _Go away_, she thought as she sat, mulishly staring at the durasteel wall.

He had not reappeared. It had been a week, and she was beginning to wonder if anything had happened to him. Not that she cared, of course: she'd privately sworn to hate Kylo Ren forever and ever until the worlds all fell down. And yet, she found herself almost missing his sudden and unexpected appearances. Was he missing hers as well? Or was he glad that she'd disappeared?

Rey didn't have much time to think about Ren, not with the drama slowly unfolding on the Falcon, anyway: Rose had gone into heat and presented as an omega after exposure to an as-yet unknown alpha, and both Finn and Poe, the only two unpresented people on the Falcon (with the exception, of course, of Rey) had been locked down in the hold by express and detailed order of Leia Organa, because nobody was sure which of them had triggered the heat and it was only a matter of waiting before one of them inevitably went into rut. Kaydel Ko Connix had fifteen credits on Poe being the alpha; and Rey had hotly denied it and thrown her lot in with Finn out of loyalty.

_It could have been me_, she thought uncomfortably as she sat alone in the corridor between the sleeping quarters where Rose was moaning wildly through the barred door. They'd had a few old suppressant packs to hand, but none of them were working very well. Probably expired. Poor Rose. Rey hoped it wasn't her. She wouldn't want to be responsible for anything like what Rose was going through. _Beta_, she thought, crossing her fingers. _Beta, beta, beta._ You were only supposed to go into heat or rut for the first time if you were physically exposed to your soulmate, and she'd never heard any different from anyone. _I would have been in rut by now if I was Rose's Alpha. It's been two days._

Kaydel skidded into the corridor. "Oh, my _stars_," she panted. "Rey, come quick. Poe and Finn are _losing it,_ they _both_ got sent into rut—"

"What?" Rey demanded, shocked. "How can they _both_—"

"It _happens_ sometimes, don't be so narrow-minded, come _on—_"

"I'm not narrow-minded!" Rey protested, but followed her at top speed down to the bottom deck, and found about ten people crowded in front of the door listening intently already.

Behind the durasteel, she could hear shouting, roaring, and the unmistakable sounds of fighting. She'd never seen two men in rut fighting, so she inched closer to the door out of curiosity, only to be shunted back as Leia swept down and the Resistance scattered like leaves before a storm. Leia opened the door and everyone gaped in amazement: Poe had his hands around Finn's throat, and both men's clothes were torn and soaked in pungent sweat, but both of their trousers were tented at the fronts, and Rey quickly looked away out of embarrassment.

Leia let air out though her nose. "Do I need to get Miss Tico?" she asked.

"Rose," Finn uttered, in a low, desperately liquid voice that sent a shiver up Rey's spine.

"_Rose_," Poe agreed, in a voice gone rough and hoarse.

"Finn," whispered a voice behind them all, and every single person turned to see Rose Tico, half-naked and draped only in a sheet from the sleeping area. She was glowing with sweat and her cheeks were flushed, her black hair stuck to her forehead, palpable relief on her face as she approached the two men. "Poe." She didn't seem quite able to stand up, and as she staggered forward Finn darted out of the room, his eyes focused on her and her only and dilated about as wide as plates, to catch her. Poe followed, helping Finn lift her, and there was no more friction between the two of them: Rose was the tempering balance in the raging soup of pheromones. He shielded her with his body—he shielded Finn, too—and gave Leia a look.

Leia stepped back. "All right. Show's over. The hold is off-limits until the week's up. You all give them some privacy. Back up topside."

"Who wins the bet?" Kaydel muttered as they trudge back up.

"All of us," said Rey, trying to smile. For some reason, it wasn't quite reaching her heart. She kept seeing Rose's beatific relief, her focus on Poe and Finn as if they were the only two people in the world who mattered, and she felt more alone than she had ever felt before.

*

Millions of lightyears away, the Supreme Leader of the First Order, Kylo Ren, woke fully from a fitful half-sleep and sat up in bed, his bare feet planted on the cold black floor of his sleeping quarters. He ran a hand across his long face, thinking of nothing at all out of habit: when a constant presence looms over one at every moment, able to read one's thoughts, one must shroud one's thoughts and emotions in a haze of muddled incomprehensibility. Snoke had been dead for almost a month, and that fear still lived alive and well in Kylo's subconscious.

Maybe, he thought, as he forced himself to think coherently for a moment—maybe it wasn't Snoke he was hiding his thoughts from, but someone else. Someone with the ability to cut him to the very quick in a way Snoke never did; someone who truly _understood_ him—

Kylo Ren cut off that springing thought as it grew and stood up, stretching mechanically as he did every morning, even though the chrono on his wall showed it was barely midnight. He was hungry, strangely, and slightly queasy at the same time. Nothing some tarine tea and a puffbiscuit or two couldn't help. _It's the stress_, he thought, crossing to the closet and pulling out a few layers of clothing to throw on. He disliked not having several layers between him and other people: it always felt too exposed, too open, too vulnerable. The last time he had allowed a person to touch his bare skin of his own volition was—

No. That was bringing it back again. He shrugged off the memory and stood, instead forcing himself to think about her stern face, staring down at him from above as he knelt; how he had nearly opened his mouth to beg her _no, don't go_, before the connection had died and left him alone. _She made her choice. I'll destroy her for it._ He tried to call up the old rage, the all-consuming fury that he knew so well that could scour him free of fear and doubt and longing, but somehow it was not coming as easily as it had used to. Something was off, something deep within him just…_different_, and he wasn't sure what it was.

He pressed the panel on the wall to summon someone to bring him food, and sat down, tugging on his gloves and boots. His time might as well be spent to good use: there were about a hundred things on his docket for tomorrow that he'd put off, and it was no good letting them wait when he had time to spare. Perhaps sleeping only three hours a day was a solid plan for Supreme Leadership after all. 

The food came on a tray in the hands of a nervous lieutenant whose uniform was so new that it might have just come off a fresh shipment from Arkanis. The woman stuttered and saluted and backed out when she'd set the tray down, looking as if she was petrified of making a single mistake, and Ren watched her go with impassive indifference. She didn't interest him either as a person or indeed as anything else, and she smelled like stale, sour fear. Kylo sat down on his uncomfortably hard chair and nibbled at the puffbiscuit, but something about the flavor seemed… off, or wrong. The pastry sat like a clump of wet duracrete in his mouth, and he forced himself to swallow it. The tea wasn't much better: for all Hux swore by its health properties, it tasted bitterly awful and smelled like fuel, and he gagged on the third sip.

_I'll just get something else later,_ he reasoned, and left the uneaten food on the tray. He didn't often indulge in food he liked, or even really take the time and effort to indulge in really anything (except mediation) but he could vaguely remember liking hearty meat-based stews as a child. He could put in an order and have a protocol droid find a recipe on the HoloNet. Or something. The growling in his belly was becoming a distraction. Ren got up and paced for a moment, uneasy. Hunger was perfectly normal, but hunger that defied food could be a sign of a serious problem. Poison? No, that was impossible: everything he consumed was tested by the taster droids first and every chef in the Supreme Leader's kitchen had to have mid-level security clearance. Illness? He was never ill: the medical bay would have taken care of that even if the Force didn't.

_There's another thing it might be,_ said the tiny voice of fear in the back of his mind, but he shoved that away and packed it down as far as it could go. "It's the stress," he said aloud, in a voice that seemed too small to his own ears. He wasn't sleeping enough, he was exhausted and wired out on caf every day just trying to get through the horrifically boring business of _ruling_ and this was just a side effect. He should try for another hour of sleep every night: that should fix it.

*

Unfortunately, Kylo Ren could not sleep for the next twenty-four hours, no matter how hard he tried. Sleep refused to come, even when, as a last resort, he sent for a medical droid to administer a sedative. The droid informed him he was running a low-grade fever, and as its programming dictated, offered medication for it. Ren sent it away and tried desperately to meditate for fifteen excruciating minutes, but he could not focus on anything. It was as if his mind was racing along with his pulse, unable to slow down, and right at the twenty-five hour mark he obtained the most painful and swollen erection he'd had in his life, deep aching cramps spreading out from his lower abdomen in waves of pain, and at _that_ point there was no use denying to himself what he knew the truth to be.

He'd presented. He was too disoriented to care _what _he had presented as, but he wasn't sure this was a rut at all from what he'd heard those were like, and he didn't want to think about it, not when every touch of fabric on his skin felt like sandpaper and his legs felt too weak to hold him upright.

With his last iota of strength, he summoned General Hux and did a very good job of pretending he was ill for exactly the amount of time it took Hux to happily accept the responsibilities of running the First Order until he was recovered, and once the door was closed and triple-mag-locked behind the man, Ren tore off his robe and shoved his hands into his pants, half-weeping with desperation.

He was _wet_, soaked from his backside to his thighs, and his trembling fingers found an _opening_ just behind his cock that he was absolutely sure hadn't been there a week ago, an opening that ached and throbbed and _wanted_.

"I can't," he panted, alone in his sterile, black on black room, yanking his hand away in terror. "I can't, I _can't_, no, no, _no._" Waves of heat and pain swept from his gut to his fingertips, and he collapsed on his knees, pants undone and tight around the muscle of his slick thighs. _Get a medical officer,_ he thought, and put it out of his mind immediately: he'd have to kill whatever medical officer saw this. The Supreme Leader, a kriffing omega: the Order would fall apart, he'd be the butt of every joke from here to the Outer Rim, he'd _fail_.

He desperately tried to think through his options. Option One: wait the heat out alone in his quarters, pretend he was sick—except there was always the possibility that he lost his mind entirely and stormed the ship, seeking out someone to mate with. He thought so, anyway: that seemed to be a common theme in most of the mating-related media he had absorbed by osmosis in the past decade.

Option Two: find the person he'd been exposed to that had forced his heat, the person who was his alpha, his soulmate. He didn't know who that was (_yes, you do, you fool, _screamed his subconscious mind_)_ and he certainly couldn't send a message, even an encrypted one, to her because he didn't know where in the universe she was, and most importantly, _most importantly,_ she would never, ever want to touch him like that, like this, the way he needed her: she would never do it.

Now that he was thinking about her, his thoughts raced across her like water over rocks in a stream: her beautiful eyes, bright and lucid; her hair, which he was sure was as soft as it looked, although he had never touched it; her mouth, hard and soft all at once; her body, lean and hard from years of meager living and capable of beating him down, destroying, taking, _living_—

He couldn't help it. His hands crept into his basics, and he muffled his groan in his teeth as his hands moved across his cock: her shirt, wet and plastered to her small, firm breasts; white woven material _just_ thick enough to be opaque, even damp. Ren's hands moved faster. Her nipples. Would they be pink? Brown? Small? Large? The image of her nipples poking through her wet shirt rocketed into his brain like a torpedo, and he came with a strangled sob. Not a full climax, this thing: it was a half-baked, weak, colorless little rush that gave him no satisfaction, and he slammed his hand on the floor in frustration.

How ironic: a man who could demand access to anyone in the Order, and the one person he desperately needed was out of his reach.

Kylo sucked in a breath, and allowed himself to think, just for a moment, about Rey calling him _Ben_ like she had in the turbolift. Soft. Gentle. Pleading. His mind conjured an image of her in the most uncovered way he'd ever seen her: soaking wet, clothes plastered to her body, hair dripping. _Please_, she said, slipping her hands across her chest, _please, let me help you, Ben; let me make it right._

"Yes," he panted, tears leaking from his eyes as his hand slipped beneath his cock and a single finger rubbed tentatively at the opening he'd been given. "Rey. _Rey."_

Something _shifted_, some indefinable thing about the air and the light moved just so slightly off its axis, and she was there, _there,_ and it wasn't a dream, it was real, and all he could do was kneel there in anguish as her eyes alighted on him.

*

Apart from the all-consuming, bizarre sensation that had swept her body upon seeing Kylo Ren half-clothed on the floor of the sleeping quarters, Rey was intensely grateful that he didn't materialize out of nowhere in, say, the crowded galley. "What are you _doing_?" she gasped, although she knew very well what he was doing: he had both enormous hands shoved down his pants like he was trying to stop a leak in a dam and his eyes were red-rimmed and watering, cheeks flushed, lips open and soft as he looked up at her. _This can't be happening._ If he was—if he—then _she_—

"Rey," he sobbed, his mouth plush and wet. "Rey. _Please_."

"I—" Something's stirring in her own trousers, something new and strange. "B—Kylo, what _happened_?"

"Something," he moaned, face upturned as if she was some kind of goddess he must pay tribute to or die. "Something. Linked us. Heat. _Please_."

Rey didn't mind him saying _please_ a little more. "What do you mean?" It wasn't possible. They couldn't be soulmates. They _couldn't be._

Real tears dripped down his long, uneven face. "Me," he gasped. "_Me._ I'm in. Heat. I called you. You—you heard me. Did you hear me? I _called_ for you."

"I—" And yet, she had, somehow, heard him. He was right. There'd been that distinct sensation of someone calling her name, and she'd seen him right after. "I can't help you. Not now." Why the _hell_ was something in her pants pressing against the front seam, and why was her heart speeding up? "Something's… something's happening."

Kylo's whole face crumpled at the denial. "Please," he begged, bending so that his hands touched the floor. "_Please,_ Rey. I'll let you do anything, anything you want to me, please." He groaned, as if not believing his own words, but shook his head and pressed on. "Anything. I need you."

Her heart was pounding so hard that it seemed like it was in her throat, and adrenaline surged through her body. "I—I can't _now_, not right now, we're—we're landing somewhere, I—we should get to somewhere quiet and safe, I have to—" Instinct was shouting one thing: _NEST!_ "Let me get somewhere safe first."

"And then you'll—?" His hope was almost palpable, both his hope and his desperation.

"I—I—" How could she say anything but _yes_ when her whole body was screaming for him? "Kylo—"

His lips parted and without any warning, the bond was cut. Rey found herself staring at the place where he'd been, with "yes" on her lips and nothing in her hands.

*

They landed on a jungle planet, a planet Rey was sure someone had told her the name of at some point, but by the time the Falcon had touched down she no longer cared what it was or where she was or indeed, if the air was even breathable. She wanted to crawl out of her own skin every moment of the day, and the sudden appearance of what looked for all the world like a penis emerging from between her legs had not made her mood better.

"I have to go," she muttered urgently to Finn, who had by now recovered. "I have to. You understand." She kept fluctuating between getting chills and having hot flashes, and her aggression had ramped up to an all-time high. Even Kaydel was giving her a wide berth, and Leia had cleared her for some time alone after she had cited vague "Jedi stuff" that she needed to go meditate on. She was extremely sure that saying "So sorry, but I think I may be soulmates with your son, oh, and we're both presenting now, so there's that," would not turn out well on anyone's end, so she had only told Finn, who had told Poe and Rose and sworn them both to secrecy.

"Just come back to us, yeah?" Finn said gently, and pointed her out to the jungle.

Once she was out of the view of the ship, Rey began to run, half-stumbling through the greenery and underbrush with only a small pack on her back, her clothes feeling as if they were too tight, too itchy. She wanted to tear down the trees, to kick something, to fight: everything hurt and nothing was letting her breathe. There was something she wanted; something she wanted above everything else, but what it was she could not say or think as she ran and ran, hair clinging to her cheeks in the humid wind, only that she must get away and be alone.

She had just made it to a clearing and stopped to catch a lungful of air when the air crackled and she turned around, the hair on the back of her neck standing up on end. Kylo Ren lay on his back on the forest floor, wrapped in three layers of black cloaks, shivering violently and staring up at her with huge, black eyes. "You came," he muttered, as if he wasn't sure whether or not she was real. "I heard you… call me."

_Then I must have,_ she thought, her mind reeling as she took a step toward him. The dark circles under his eyes spoke of sleepless days and nights, along with the stubble on his cheeks: it was dark, like his hair, and of course it would have been—but she had never seen him looking this disheveled before. And he was _hurting_—she could feel that even without touching him: he was aching in a way she thought only she could ache. Maybe the lines between who she was and who he was were more blurred than she thought. Maybe they were getting blurrier. "Where—where does it hurt?" she whispered, feeling as if her throat might close off.

"Everywhere," he said, voice gone strained and delirious. "Please. You—you said. You promised. _Please._"

"Something has—something's changed," Rey managed to force out, dropping her pack on the wet ground. "Something about _me_." She'd been too afraid to touch herself for the past two days despite the urges building deep within her body, and she didn't want to scare him with whatever was in her pants.

His eyes locked onto hers. "Something's changed about me, too," he rasped out.

Oh. All right. That changed things a bit. "Show me," she told him, dropping to her knees beside him.

He sucked in a small breath (had he always looked so pitiful?) and reached up with shaking hands to pull off one glove, exposing pale skin and large fingers. His hand shook for a moment, and he swallowed. "I can't," he moaned, looking terrified. "Can't. Rey. Please."

"Let me help you," she whispered, and reached for his layers of clothing, tight to his neck. He relaxed at her touch, and let her unwrap him slowly until his naked chest was exposed to the humid jungle air. "Where are you right now?" Rey asked, afraid to touch his bare skin.

"My quarters," he managed. "You?"

"Some planet. Jungle." Her hands trembled just above his chest: why did she feel like some kind of animal was trying to claw its way out of her heart? _If I don't touch him, it won't be real. _"I've been—I thought I was sick," she blurted out, unable to stop herself. "But I wasn't. I'm not. Am I?"

He shook his head. "It's us," he rasped. "You and me."

"We're…" Rey couldn't bring herself to say it, the word trapped on her tongue.

"Say it," Kylo whispered, face twitching. "You know what it is. Say it."

"Soulmates," she spat out. "It's—us. You and me."

"You hate me," he said, still looking at her. "I know you do."

"No, _you_—you hate me," Rey snapped, hands curling into fists. "You hate _me_, you tried to make me leave my friends, the only place I felt like I belonged—"

"You know that's not true," Kylo whispered, and the truth crashed into her mind: she _didn't_ feel like she belonged, not with the Resistance and not with Luke and nowhere else she'd been. Tears welled up in her eyes. As if he'd read her mind, Kylo added, "And you know it's not true that I hate you."

A sob caught in her throat. "Don't," she snapped, trying to hide it.

"_Please_," he whispered, looking up at her in supplication. "Help me."

Everything in her body yearned to touch him: his scent was rolling off his throat and naked chest. Rey couldn’t help herself—she took a breath of it, and her mouth began to water with how good he smelled. Leather, smoke, something deeply sweet and sharp: she inhaled again and her eyes shut of their own accord. "I—"

"It's just us," he begged, and one pale hand worked its way toward her waist, pausing on his waist as if he was afraid to advance any further. The rose stain on his cheeks deepened, and he licked his lips, eyes fixed on her throat. "You s-smell—so good, Rey. Like—like after it rains, fresh and, and, clean—"

She gave up trying to resist what her body was wailing at her to do. With quick, frantic hands that seemed far too strong for her, Rey grabbed the cloak draped over his hips (he wasn't wearing trousers, probably because the touch of the fabric was torment) and pulled it away to expose him fully to her sight.

He was…big. Very big, and very swollen, and very tender to the touch, as she discovered when she brushed a finger just above the base of him, in the coarse dark hair there. He lifted his hips and whined, actually whined like some kind of animal, and as he shifted one leg Rey's eyes caught something just behind his cock, something wet and pink and—

"Oh," she breathed, and blinked, looking up at his face as he shut his eyes, shame drowning him. "Can I—can I touch it?"

"You might as well," he said, sounding bleak and somehow still desperate. So she reached down, brushed a finger across the opening, and he squeezed his eyes shut as her index finger pressed gently inside, testing the give. Kylo's huge hands dug into the discarded fabric on either side of his body, the veins standing out across the tendons. "Rey," he choked.

"I can—I can fix it," she whispered, suddenly understanding. "I'm your alpha. I'll help you. I can do it. Look." And she leaned back on her haunches, undoing the closure on her own pants, and standing, shrugging out of them, showed him her own body and what was waiting for him under the pale fabric of her basics.

"Ah," said Kylo, without much inflection, his eyes fixed on the area between her legs. Her shaft was smaller than his, but still big enough to penetrate him: it seemed to push out from the top of her privates, all soft and wet and pink.

She hesitated, unsure of how to read his expression. Was he disgusted by her, or did he like it? "You—do you want—"

"Yes," he said, too quickly, and shut his eyes again. "Please. Rey."

"Right." Rey figured she might as well keep her shirt on: no point making him any more uncomfortable that he clearly was already. "I've never—I'm sure it will be fine." She pulled the rest of the fabric off him, leaving him bare in a nest of black cloth on the jungle ground, and he lay there, unresisting and trembling as she gently pulled one of his massive thighs to the side, pressing herself to him, bracing herself along his waist with a hand. The urge to slam into him, to take him and knot him and fill him, was almost irresistible, but she forced herself to hold off long enough to ask, "Is this all right?" in a voice that seemed too tight and forced.

"Rey, _please_," was all Kylo forced out through gritted teeth, and then she was pushing her hips forward, and she was inside him and he was hot and tight and slick, and she had never felt anything like this, not ever, never in her life.

*

_Why won't she take her shirt off?_ Kylo thought through the fog of pheromones clouding his mind as Rey panted and rocked back and forth clumsily into him. It was good, so good, and he wanted to see her body, all of her body, but she'd kept everything above the waist on, and he was afraid to reach up, to touch her. So he lay there, passive and pliant because if he moved, if he moved a single inch, she might disappear—and if she disappeared, if the Force cut them off again, he would die: he knew it.

His legs were shaking with the effort of keeping himself still. "Rey," he gasped, unable to stop himself as she shifted her position and rammed even deeper into him, eliciting a cry from both of them. His untouched cock, swollen and aching, bounced up and down on his lower belly, and all he could think for a moment was how glad he was that she wasn't touching him there, too, because he might come apart and—

Rey _heard him_. Her eyes snapped up to his, and before he could say a word her little fingers were wrapped around his cock (they couldn't even reach all the way around, her hands were so small) and she was moving her hand and he cried out, every muscle in his body contracting as the Force surged around him. Across the room, a tray of personal care items clattered to the floor, smashing. _Stop_, he wanted to beg, but he knew if she stopped, he would lose his mind. "Don't stop," he begged instead, the words half formed and breaking on the ends. "Don't, don't, don't st-stop—"

She bit down on her lip and concentrated—kept pumping away at him, and he half-pushed himself up on his elbows, trying to seek out her mouth: it was too hot, her body was wet with sweat, his legs were trembling, and one hand fumbled clumsily with the hem of her shirt. "Off," he pleaded, shaking. "Off, take it, take it off—"

Rey let go of his cock to yank the shirt off over her head, and he took up where she had left off, furiously pumping up and down as she pushed his shoulders back down to the floor with a light in her eyes he'd missed seeing there and redoubled her efforts between his legs. "Ah," she panted, eyes locked on his. "Ah, ah, K—_Ben_, Ben, I can't, I can't—"

"I need it," he sobbed, his free hand clinging to her bent knee, somewhere by his hip. He was too afraid to touch her chest, but the sight of her small breasts was threatening to send him over the edge anyway. "I need it, Rey, Rey, I need it—"

She arched her back, driving so deeply into him that he knew that not even the Force could rip her from him now, and let out a roar, something pulled from the depths of her lungs, something primal and possessive, and then he felt the knot, swelling, locking them together. Rey let out another cry and her body shook slightly, and Kylo could feel the seed spilling hot and coursing into him.

_Kriff me,_ he thought, dazed, before his own orgasm ripped through him like a thirty-megaton Star Destroyer and left him in tears with his own seed splattered across his belly, shaking underneath his mate as every muscle in his body went loose and soft as wet string, and he wanted nothing more than for her to lay her head on his chest, so he could hold her close and wait out the knot together.

She didn't lay her head down. She stayed where she was, between his thighs, arms holding her over him as she evaded his eyes and looked at the walls instead. _Look at me,_ he wanted to cry out, _why won't you look at me?_ The insufferable heat that had flooded his body and starved him of reason was receding, and shame and anger began to creep back: he'd mated irrevocably with _Rey_, Rey, who hated him, who would sooner see him dead. _Idiot. Weak._ He could have demanded any alpha woman from any system: he knew that officers had direct contact with about sixteen very expensive escort agencies with every kind of gender and sex configuration imaginable—why hadn't he demanded Hux get him a brochure? Now he was trapped with Rey's knot swollen inside him, the size of his fist, it felt like, and on top of that he wasn't using contraception because he'd been celibate for _decades_: this could be bad, very bad.

Rey shut her eyes. "It'll be over soon," she said, and sounded strained. "I think. That's what they said, anyway."

He cleared his throat. There was no point, he guessed, in remaining silent throughout the rest of the inevitable contact. "Who's _they_?"

She was still not looking at him. "Dameron. And—and Finn."

_The Resistance spy and the traitor_. If Kylo hadn't already been physically spent, he was sure any mention of the wayward stormtrooper or the idiot pilot would have rendered him entirely impotent. "Why were they talking to you about _that_?" he growled.

Rey did look at him then, with undisguised anger in her eyes. "Because they both presented at the same time on board the bloody ship, and with the same omega woman. When I started feeling _sick, _I spoke to Finn in private. And also, it's none of your business why I talk to who I talk to."

If he hadn't still been trapped under her, he would have thrown her off him. "You're my soulmate. There's no getting around th—"

"I am _not_ your soulmate!" she spat. "I—this is—I can't be your soulmate. This was—this was a bad choice, this was the wrong thing to do."

"Bold words for someone who's still _knotted inside me,_" Kylo snarled, hurt and angry. "At least we can both agree on one thing: this was a mistake."

Out of instinct, Rey tried to pull away, but both of them yelped in pain, and she fell forward, landing on his bare chest before scrambling awkwardly up to hold herself away from him as far as possible. "I'm sorry," she said, voice gone low and quiet. "I should never have—let myself be open to this, never. It wasn't—I wasn't thinking."

Kylo took in a small breath. "Don't go," he whispered, swallowing his pride and his anger one last time. "Don't leave me."

She shook her head, strands of hair still stuck to her face. "I have to—I can't, I can't do this, it was wrong."

Between his legs, the knot was at last deflating, loosening the bond between them. "Rey—"

She looked at him one last time with undeniable horror and sadness in her eyes, and then she was gone, nothing between his legs where she had been a moment before, and nothing of her left except the seed inside him and his own profound sense of loss, and across the room more transparisteel shattered as Kylo screamed out his rage and loss into the Force.

*

FIVE MONTHS LATER

Rey was getting along just _fine_, thank you. The Resistance had recently decided to make their home Batuu, a beautiful, forested planet deep in the Outer Rim, on the border of the Unknown Regions, where the only trading outpost for miles, Black Spire, was a bustling little town where people liked to keep their heads down and not attract attention. They had already managed to recruit a few people from under the noses of the Order, who rarely came to Batuu, but whose presence seemed to be slowly growing, so the Resistance mostly kept to themselves, using the Falcon (which had been landed out in the forest far from prying eyes) as a home base and going about their days pretending to be locals in Black Spire. Rey liked to throw on a cloak and slip around the cantinas, listening to the troopers gossip about how the Supreme Leader had isolated himself in meditation for months and wasn't seeing anyone.

Well, she didn't really _like_ it. In fact, it made her feel guilty and sad, but it was like picking off a scab: hurting to make sure you were still alive, or maybe hurting yourself to make sure you still felt something, even though you didn't want to, or weren't sure why you kept revisiting the—

Anyway. It was like that. Rey had purposely shut herself off from the Force-bond, ignoring every effort he made to open it up again. Once, she had wavered in her resolve, and caught his voice, eerily close and whispering, _Rey…_ but she had closed it off immediately, and by now she had even managed to keep the barrier up while she was sleeping.

Recently, however, the attempts to open the bridge between them had become increasingly stronger, and she was a little worried—or she would have been worried if she'd cared, which she _didn't_: she was fine. There certainly wasn't any problem on her end: the sense of horrendous loss that she'd felt after cutting the bond off the first time had gone away—or at least, she thought it had, a little—and now she could go about her everyday life normally. Even smiling, sometimes. She was fine. Totally fine.

"Hello-o," called Rose, interrupting Rey's thoughts as she perched on the crate in the Falcon's hold. She poked her head around the door. "Rey, did you still want that scanner? I have it here—I recalibrated it to seek out the signatures on First Order ships. It's just a slightly different frequency than ours, but it wasn't too hard—I mean, not that anyone's ever done it before but _me,_ that I know of—"

"Thanks," Rey interrupted, smiling down at Rose as she walked forward and waved the scanner in the air. "You're brilliant. How are you and baby?"

Rose beamed and patted her round middle. "Great, according to Kalonia. And no, we're not doing the paternity test until _after_ he's born, even if it mattered to us."

"Oh, it _is_ a he?" Rey slipped off the crate. "Have you picked out a name?"

"We're sitting on a couple." Rose smiled, and Rey suddenly envied her: a happy woman still doing what she loved with the people she loved, and her son would have a family who adored him. "But it's bad luck to tell you before he's born."

"Then I won't press," Rey said, still trying to smile, and hid her emotions by looking down at the scanner. "I'll go, uh, try this one out. Thank you." She slipped out the port and headed down into the forest, breathing the air deeply as she went. The day was bright and clear enough to see the spires of stone in the distance, and pollen drifted in golden specks in the sunbeams streaming between the branches of the great trees. Out here, Rey could think for a moment, wandering the winding path that led down to Black Spire.

She was so deeply in thought that she hardly noticed the scanner in her hands beeping plaintively at her for a moment, and only looked down just in time to see a red blip moving across the blue and green holo of the landscape. Quickly, Rey tapped it, bringing up a three-dimensional image of the object in question, and read the stats in a millisecond: First Order transport, falling at a high rate of speed, one engine out, arcing toward the ground only a kilometer away.

Two life-forms were aboard.

Rey let out a very loud curse word and turned around, looking up at the sky—there! The smoking ship was just visible past the treetops, sailing toward the south and plummeting to the surface at a high rate of speed. She reached for her lightsaber at her hip: still there and newly repaired, more than capable of taking on two stormtroopers in a crashed transport. They must be terrible pilots, if one of them had blown out the engine. She wouldn't bother alerting the Resistance yet; this was going to be an easy job, and anyway, she had her comm on her just in case.

Quickly, she turned and ran in the direction of the crashed ship, the sounds of the forest a cacophony to the pounding of her heart and her breathing.

*

The ship, true to Rey's expectations, was on its side, smoking and sparking from the port engine, and surrounded by plowed-up earth that smelled fresh and clean below the scents of engine exhaust and smoke. Nobody was near it, and Rey glanced back down at the scanner to confirm her suspicions: both life-forms were still inside the ship.

She leaped up onto the cracked windscreen and ignited her lightsaber, carving down through the transparisteel as if it was paper before ripping it away with a surge of the Force. "Out!" she shouted at the interior. How dare the Order infringe on _her_ territory? "Get _out—"_

Her cry died in her throat at the sight inside. No troopers, no white armor, no weapons: only Kylo Ren's bone-pale face staring up at her from the pilot's seat, body swathed in black. The look on his face was enough to stop her in her tracks, and she stood there silently as he clumsily undid the straps keeping him in place and dropped to the side of the transport with a groan. "I'm not armed," he said, sounding strained, and she dropped her saber, the blade hissing back into nonexistence.

_Two life forms,_ she remembered, and brought her saber to her hand again with a flick of the Force. "Where's the other one?" she demanded, peering behind him into the dark interior. "Where's your—what, did you bring a trooper with you?"

"What?" he asked, righting himself and getting to his feet.

Rey narrowed her eyes. "The other person. There were two life-forms on the scanner. Have you gone and got yourself an apprentice? Where are they?"

Kylo shook his head and stepped forward into the light, and she could see how dark the circles beneath his eyes are, how exhausted and ill he looked. Despite the clear stress written beneath his eyes and on his forehead, he looked as if he'd put on a bit of weight in the past months: she didn't remember that softness to his jawline. _Is he stress-eating?_ she thought, and put the ludicrous image of Kylo raiding the kitchens on the Finalizer to the back of her mind. "There's nobody. Just me."

Rey frowned. "But the scanner—"

"Why weren't you opening the bond?" he demanded. "I was trying to _speak_ to you."

Her temper flared again. "There is nothing you could possibly have to say to me after—after what happened between us. It happened, it's gone and done, and that's all. Did you really crash your own transport to try to _talk_ to me?"

"It's not gone and done," Kylo said wearily.

Rey glared at him. "It would be if you'd just—pretend it didn't _happen_—"

"How am I supposed to pretend it didn't happen?" he roared, taking a sudden step toward her and making her step backward on the bent metal. "You didn't _talk to me for months_, and—"

"I don't _want to talk to you!" _Rey fought to keep from crying. "What do you _want?_ Haven't we hurt each other enough?"

"That depends," said Kylo Ren wearily, "on what you mean by _hurt_." He opened his cloak, and she looked down automatically, then blinked and focused again, because what she was seeing was _ridiculous, _impossible, like a joke, a gundark's head pasted on a bantha.

"No," she said, horrified.

"Yes," he told her. "Now you see why I can't just _pretend it didn't happen_."

The heavy cloaks had done a good deal to hide his body from prying eyes, but there was no mistaking the rounded curve beneath the quilted black tunic, especially not in broad daylight. He might have been able to hide it for another month or two, especially in the stark light of a First Order ship, but the truth was undeniable to Rey's shocked eyes.

"How—how far al—"

"How far do you _think?_" he spat, looking wounded as he yanked the cloak shut again. "Five months. I've been keeping count."

"But—" Rey had to sit down or she was going to collapse. She settled for sliding off the wrecked front of the transport and kneeling on the fresh earth, inhaling deeply to ground herself. So _that_ had been the second life-form. "You haven't seen a doctor?"

Kylo followed her down, slightly clumsier. "Of course not. You think a single doctor or orderly or medical officer in the First Order could keep the fact that the Supreme Leader is an omega carrying a _child_ to themselves?"

"You—you need screening," Rey said, mind going a thousand miles a minute. "You—there's medicine and vitamins and things, I know because Rose Tico's pregnant, too, and—oh, _stars_. You'll be due at nearly the same time—but you're hardly showing and she's so—well, I guess that’s expected because you're already huge and she's so small—why did you even come here?"

He sighed. "I wanted to be with my child's mother. Is that a crime?"

Rey snorted. "_Your_ mother is going to lay a porg's egg when she claps eyes on you." Kylo averted his eyes at that, and she sighed. "How are you going to explain this to the Order?"

"Everyone thinks I'm still on the Finalizer," he explained. "I left one of my trusted Knights in my place with my clothes and helmet and gave him strict orders to wait for me."

"So you're going back," Rey said, disappointment filling her chest. "You think—hold on, you think you'll just leave this baby with _me _and zip back to the Order to resume your reign of—"

Kylo blinked. "No, I'll take the baby with me. Back to the Order."

Rage filled her chest. How dare he even presume to think for a second that she'd let that happen? "Back to the Order?! You are not taking our baby back to the damn First Order if I have anything to say about it, you gundark-eared, poodoo for brains _moron_—"

Kylo slumped down to the dirt on his knees and gulped in a breath of air, and then he began to laugh. He laughed so hard and so long that he started to cry, and Rey got up and frantically searched her bag for anything that would help: wasn't being hysterical bad for a pregnant person? "What in the Rim is the _matter_ with you?" she shouted, half in tears herself.

"You _care_ about it," he sobbed, when he was able to get words out. "I thought you would hate it. I thought you'd make me—I don't know, get rid of it, or hate it, or something."

Rey gaped, flabbergasted. "Why would you think I would _hate_ it?"

Kylo wiped his eyes. "I don't _know_. You never opened the link, you cut me off, you shut me out and I was alone with _this_ and I didn't know what to do, and I need you. I can't—I can't do this without you." Drained, he slumped sideways suddenly, and Rey bent down to catch him before he slammed into the dirt. "I'm so tired," he muttered, hair hanging in his face. "All the time, Rey."

"We're going to take care of you," Rey told him firmly. "I swear we will. You and the baby. You'll both be fine."

She commed back to base for assistance with a evac, and when the rescue crew, consisting of Finn, Kalonia, and Connix, crested the hill and entered the clearing, they found Kylo Ren sleeping, his head in Rey's lap, and she was stroking his hair.

*

Kylo opened his eyes. He was lying on his side, one knee pulled up and dressed in a lightweight medical gown, and the soothing sounds of a synth-soothing monitor from somewhere over his head. He raised his head a little to look around, and realized he was in the Falcon, tucked into the sickbay: it was cold in here, and his skin rippled with goosebumps.

Sitting on the floor between the wall and a crate was Rey, her knees tucked up to her chest and her head pillowed on both arms, the side of her head leaning against the wall. She was asleep, her eyes still and closed, her sides rising and falling as he watched her. _She didn't leave me_. He pushed himself up on one arm and delicately righted his body on the sickbay bench. It was much smaller than he remembered it being.

"Hi," said a voice from the door to the corridor, and Kylo looked up blankly to see Poe Dameron, eyeing him up as he leaned against the frame. His first instinct was to drag the man's throat to his hand with the Force and demand to know why he was in here watching them, but after a moment of consideration, he reflected that perhaps leaving the Supreme Leader of the First Order alone in a room with the Resistance's Jedi, pregnant or no, was not a good idea on the part of the Resistance.

"Dameron," he said instead, unsure of exactly how he was supposed to greet someone politely. Vague memory from his childhood trickled back, and he added, "It's… nice to see you."

"Huh," said Dameron, blinking. "So, you feeling better?"

Kylo looked down at himself. The soreness in his back had disappeared, and he didn't feel that bone-deep exhaustion he remembered. "Yes."

"Good. You've slept for twelve hours." Poe pushed off the wall and stepped toward him with some caution. "We'll get you some food. If you have a craving or anything, someone can always run to the cantinas in Black Spire and grab it. We're used to it, what with Rose."

"Rose." Right. The other pregnant person, the one Rey had mentioned. "My mother?"

A very slight muscle in Poe's jaw flexed. "In the forest. Meditating. She wanted to gather her thoughts before, um, seeing you."

Kylo shut his eyes. "I understand." He couldn't imagine that playing out any other way, not with what he'd done.

"Rey told us you didn't mean any harm, and not that I don't believe her, but. You know." Poe shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

"Yes." Kylo shifted his eyes back over to Rey, who was still asleep, neck crooked in a position that couldn't possibly be comfortable. "She's… been here?"

"For all twelve hours," Poe confirmed. "Won't move, won't let you out of her sight." Kylo's confusion must have shown on his face, because Poe added, "You know. She's your alpha. She's got so many protective hormones raging I'm surprised she didn't gut me with her bare hands when we loaded you onto the lift."

"That's…nice," Kylo said, tears threatening to choke him. Of course, it was expected behavior from an alpha with a pregnant mate, but still: the gesture was appreciated. "We should let her sleep."

Poe saw his teary eyes and took a step back. "Oh. Uh. Should I—do you want some, um, hot mocoa, or maybe some fried tip-yip?"

Whoever Rose was, she had trained her mates well. Ren's belly growled. "Both. Please."

"Right. Back in a second." Dameron makes a hasty exit.

Rey stirred on the ground as his boots thumped. "Oh—_Ben,_" she said urgently, bleary-eyed, and got to her feet, focusing on him intently. "How are you feeling?"

The use of his name was too much, and he burst into tears. "I'm f-fine," he stammered, wiping his face as she hurried to his side. "I don't know what—what's—"

"It's normal," said Harter Kalonia as she swept through the door, and _that_ was a face he'd not expected to see again in his lifetime. "Hello, Ben."

"Dr. Kalonia," he greeted her, voice still slightly quavering.

She checked his vitals and went over his small chart as thoroughly as she could before whipping out a medscanner. "Shall we have a look at baby, then?" she asked.

"Please," said Kylo, and shut his eyes, almost afraid to see whatever was lurking beneath his skin. Rey's small hand closed gently on his left wrist, and his eyes opened, seeking her face out. Their eyes met, his cheeks flushed with heat, and he looked down just in time to see the holo of—

Baby. That was a _baby_: their baby, a human being floating in blue and green atop Kalonia's scanner. Rey almost choked beside him. "Oh, lovely," said Kalonia, smiling. "It appears you're expecting a healthy girl."

"A girl," Kylo repeated, stunned.

"Undoubtedly," said Kalonia. "Gestational age twenty-one weeks. You've passed your halfway mark. I'll put you on a natal nutrition diet: Rey mentioned you'd gained some extra weight and while we do want you eating _some_ extra calories, too many isn't good for you or baby."

"I thought I was supposed to eat for two," Kylo said, baffled.

Kalonia chuckled. "That's a common misconception. An extra five hundred or so calories a day is perfectly adequate."

"Ah," he said, not really knowing what to say.

Rey took over. "We'll meet with General Organa as soon as we can to discuss possible solutions to the tensions between the Order and the Resistance. If there's nothing else, Doctor?"

"Not now, no," said Kalonia, and put away her scanner. "You alert me at once if you have any problems, Ben. I'm no stranger to obstetrics. In fact, I was your mother's—"

"I know," Kylo interrupted frantically. "Thank you, Doctor."

"I'll leave you two time to be alone," she said gently, and walked away.

Rey removed her hand from Kylo's wrist as soon as Kalonia was gone, giving him an awkward look. "I didn't mean—I thought you might want to have someone…hold your hand for that."

He grunted slightly noncommittally. "I… I did. It was nice."

She blushed. "Oh. Good."

Spurred on by the flush, he screwed up his courage. "Are we—are you, I mean, are you… happy?"

"I don't know what I am," Rey confessed. "I suppose it will depend on what happens after all this is over."

He frowned. "But right now. You're… not happy?"

"You're not," she accused. "You're frightened. I can sense it."

"And you're trying to decide whether or not you hate me or you want to scratch someone's face off for looking at me wrong," he shot back. "Dameron was very—"

"Poe should have kept his mouth shut," she hissed, pink in the cheeks. "It's—that's not something I can control very well at the moment and he knows it."

It's a small comfort, but it settled in his chest anyway and spread like warm milk over his body. "If I'd had a mate even half as fierce as you, they would have been good enough for me."

"I'm sorry I shut you out," she said softly. "I won't do it again. Not till—not till—" and she pressed her lips together, leaving the unspoken _not until you go back_ hanging in the air between them like a blade.

"Maybe I won't go back," he mused, almost to himself, and pretended not to notice the surge of hope coursing off Rey like an ocean wave before she stood up and extended her fingers to him.

"Come on," she said. "Let's go talk to your mother."

He took her hand, and they walked out into the drenching golden light of the day together.


End file.
